featured-image

Magic Now Hope to Use Playoff Absence as Fuel to Improve

Josh Cohen
Digital News Manager

Note: The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Orlando Magic. All opinions expressed by John Denton are solely his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Orlando Magic or their Basketball Operations staff, partners or sponsors.

By John DentonApril 14, 2016

ORLANDO – On Thursday, when there were no more games to prepare for, no more injuries to recover from and no more road trips to go on, the Orlando Magic were forced to face the harsh reality that their primary goal for the season wasn’t going to happen.

Sure, the Magic haven’t known for weeks that their season would be ending without a playoff berth. But when the finality of the NBA’s marathon season hit and the offseason began way too soon again, it reminded the front office, the coaching staff and the players that they missed out on an opportunity and missed out on the stated goal of reaching the postseason.

It’s a bitter feeling that almost certainly will stay with the Magic (35-47) throughout the offseason. Not even the tangible strides made this season – a 10-win improvement for just the fourth double-digit victory jump in the 27-year history of the franchise – could soothe the hurt feelings of falling short of a postseason they felt they should now be a part of.

``We don’t want to make excuses. We set a goal for ourselves before the season to make the playoffs and we didn’t do that so we underachieved,’’ standout center Nikola Vucevic said. ``It’s kind of sad. We did make improvements from last year, but that wasn’t enough; the goal was to make the playoffs, not just to improve. A lot of those games, maybe we’d have won more of them if we had (more experience), but it didn’t happen so our season is over.’’

Hence, the early start once again to the silly season of analysis and evaluation about what all that went wrong and what could have been done differently. That review starts, of course, at the top with General Manager Rob Henningan and head coach Scott Skiles. Both thought the Magic were improved and experienced enough at the beginning of the season to be playoff ready, and they said as much when training camp opened in September.

Hennigan, Orlando’s fourth-year GM, and Skiles, the team’s first-year head coach, both looked to be right on the money early in the season when the Magic opened 19-13 and started building a noticeable defensive identity.

Then, disaster struck a day into 2016 as Orlando lost in Washington and began a soul-crushing stretch where it dropped 15 of 17 games. All throughout that six-week swoon there were crushing losses where the Magic fell apart in the fourth quarter (to Memphis and Charlotte), losses where they strangely lacked energy (Detroit and Toronto), losses where injuries caught up to them (to Elfrid Payton and C.J. Watson) and when the schedule grew teeth with significantly tougher foes (Cleveland, San Antonio, Atlanta and Boston).

On Thursday, Hennigan was left to try and balance the good from the strong start and the encouraging 6-3 spurt at the end of the season and the disappointment of the midseason swoon and the playoff failings.

``We didn’t make the type of progress that we had hoped to make this season,’’ Hennigan said. ``At the beginning of the year we had the stated goal of making the playoffs and clearly we came up short on that end. But, at the same time, there’s a balance between realizing that we did make steady progress and we don’t want to discount that.

``We added 10 wins to our total with essentially the same roster, which we consider to be a positive. And then you consider that we played in as many close games as anyone in the league and that’s a positive, too,’’ Hennigan continued. ``The flip side of that is that we’ve got to figure out how to win more of those to get us to the playoffs. That’s on me, that starts with me and I’ve got to figure out a way to get our team better-suited to be in the postseason.’’

Skiles, the former fan favorite as a player who returned as coach in hopes of jolting the franchise back into the playoffs, also took it hard that the Magic came up short of the stated goal of playing beyond the regular season.

``We just got done talking to all of the guys and they all seem to acknowledge how we feel and that’s that there was improvement and players got better, so they should take something positive from that. But also everybody is down about the fact that we didn’t get accomplished what we wanted to get accomplished,’’ Skiles said. ``That’s a good thing (that they were upset).

``When the season is over you are what you are and what your record says you are,’’ Skiles added. ``Our record says we made a 10-win improvement, but it takes a winning record right now in the Eastern Conference to get in (the playoffs) and we weren’t close to that. We’re somewhere in the middle.’’

Orlando’s ability to climb back into the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference will ultimately come down to improvement – both from the core players on the roster and with the acquisition of talent via trades and free agency.

Thanks to midseason trades of Tobias Harris and Channing Frye, Orlando could potentially have enough financial flexibility to fit in two maximum-salaried players onto the roster for next season. Potential free agents are under contract until July 1 and the Magic aren’t allowed to comment on specifics, however their plan of attack for the summer is already well underway. The key, Hennigan stressed, is pursuing and signing the right players and not just spending because there is a strong desire from everyone involved to get the franchise back in the postseason.

``This is a summer for improvement and we can improve a lot of different ways,’’ Hennigan said. ``I think we will improve internally by the development of our young core players. But it’s an important summer to add to the team externally as well. We’ll be as aggressive as any team in free agency and we’ll be ambitious, but at the same time we’ll be very disciplined. It’s important to strike a balance between being aggressive and making sure we have the discipline to invest and spend wisely considering the circumstances that are changing in the spending environment.’’

One area where there’s agreement that the Magic must improve is with the addition of some seasoned veterans who can help stabilize the Magic in tough times and be difference-makers in close games. Skiles has been baffled for months at how the Magic were tough enough to start 19-13 and then brittle enough to fall completely apart when adversity hit in January and early February. Skiles said that it’s difficult to talk playoffs to a team full of 20-year-olds (Aaron Gordon and Mario Hezonja) and 21-year-olds (Elfrid Payton) when they’ve never experienced the high of the NBA postseason. It might have been helpful, Skiles and several players said, to have that message coming from veteran players who have been through the battles and the struggles of a long season and they can provide the team some much-needed swagger and toughness.

``A guy like (Vucevic), myself or when Tobias (Harris) was here, we are starters and have a lot of responsibility, but it’s hard to tell a young guy to do something when it’s only your fourth year (in the NBA),’’ said guard Evan Fournier, who had a career year by averaging 15.4 points on 46.2 percent shooting and 40 percent accuracy from 3-point range. ``You need more (experience). If you want to have a voice that really impacts the locker room you have to go through eight or 10 seasons and have gone through the playoffs. When you’re only 23 yourself, it’s hard to explain to other guys what to do.’’

Skiles said he has his own opinions about what the Magic need to add in the offseason, and he wanted to give them more thought since the season just ended on Wednesday night in Charlotte with a 117-103 loss to the playoff-bound Hornets. He does buy into the theory that when a team has too many young players that those athletes tend to cannibalize each other in a sense because of their hunger for minutes, shots, fame and the highly coveted second NBA contract.

``The more veteran voices that you can have in the locker room to help, the better,’’ Skiles said. ``The good teams – the really, really good teams – the coaches aren’t doing to much of any policing of anything in the locker rooms because there’s so much leadership in there that there isn’t much to do. You’re talking to the guys all of the time, of course, but the locker room just kind of takes care of itself.’’

On the floor, Vucevic led the Magic in both scoring and rebounding for a second straight year. Victor Oladipo came on in the second half of the season for a second straight year, while Payton played his best basketball down the stretch when he finally picked up the pace. Gordon and Hezonja, Orlando’s two youngest players, showed flashes of greatness throughout and proved themselves to be building blocks for the future. And Fournier and Jason Smith – a restricted free agent and an unrestricted free agent come July – set themselves up for big payday increases with solid shooting seasons.

However, none of it helped the Magic accomplish the goal of reaching the playoffs. And the reality of that failure hit the team hard on Thursday, the first day of an offseason that came too soon.

``It’s pretty disappointing because we’re not playing still and it would have been nice to play all the way through May, but we’re not,’’ said Gordon, who possesses the maturity of someone much older than 20 years old. ``We have to accept (missing the playoffs) and it’s a tough pill to swallow. But obviously it’s something that we need or we wouldn’t have to be going through this again.’’